1/48 Heinkel He 219 A-7 (FINISHED)......

I've been eyeballing that kit for sometime now. Nice to see it in your skilled hands. Great work as usual.

BK

O, this should be good. I do like a nice 219, will be looking forward to this.

Joe, the 219 was the first aircraft to enter full production with ejection seats. But the He 280 had been fitted with them before the 219, and the first live ejection was from a 280 in Jan 1943.

The cockpit detail is amazing!

Toshi

Now this outta be good Joe. I'm probably going to save this WIP somewhere because I've got this kit "in stock".

BTW good to see you Eric!

THIS is a paint job I am looking forward to. (Drooling on keyboard)

wing_nut

THIS is a paint job I am looking forward to. (Drooling on keyboard)

 

O ye, thats a good point. I managed to avoid that on my recent 219, i'll certainly be looking for some tips.

wing_nut

THIS is a paint job I am looking forward to. (Drooling on keyboard)

 

And youre off to a really good start.  Excellent painting there.

Hi Joe, well you picked a busy/difficult scheme, but I 'm certain you'll make a great job of it.  As always, impeccable work in the cockpit.

regards,

Jack

Joe, did you forget about us hungry update hounds?

Thanks all for the kindness.  I'm finally in for an update.  I'm wrapping up a bathroom remodel which has been consuming quite a bit of my free time.  I hate household taping and painting.  Anyways, with the 219, I'm limited to a few hours here and a few hours there.  I did get the frame together and was surprised as this is a rather large aircraft. I somehow managed to slightly misalign the fuselage halves as the glue set, so I had a slight step to deal with.  This resulted in more sanding through detail than I really needed..and the 219 has alot of detail at the seam.....ugh! I ended up losing the small circular access panels on the spine which were poorly engraved to begin with.  Tried as I might, I was unable to salvage them.  I may try to scribe them back in.

The nacelles fit good to the wing, but getting there is a challenge.  They "clamshell" together, which leaves a nasty seam that I found tough to get out. I used the super glue accelerator trick on these.  Fortunately there was no detail to worry about there.    

Here we have the engine fronts, the antenna/nose, and the "Musik" added.  I drilled out the Musik 30 mm cannon barrels and painted them.  I'm not sure why as they will be hidden.  Other than my seam issues, this has gone together quite nice.....no filler.   

I'm having difficulty on deciding a scheme.  The all light grey versions, quite frankly, bore me silly.  I want one like that on the box art, which attracted me to the kit in the first place....black underside and preferably with spinner spirals.  I figured I'd throw down the scheme and then peruse ebay for one that fits my stringent needs.  Black finishes are still experimental for me, so I started by spraying the underside XF-24 Dark Grey with various mixes of XF-69 NATO Black and XF-1 Flat Black added. Here's where I ended up.  I'll probably add some streaking later. 

I highlighted the upper surface with more XF-69. 

The black was then taped off to await the upper color, which I believe should be RLM 76.  This is where I left off for now. 

I hope to start paintng the camo soon.  Oh all those littles RLM colored dots to come......

Joe

Joe this is coming along nicely! The office looks really sharp. Looking forward to seeing the top colors go on!

Really nice progress Joe, those guns do look real nice, shame they will be hidden. I know what you mean about that scheme. One good thing about 72nd is that Dragon do just enough diferant versions to do differant schemes, and i am edging towards a black underside for the 32nd kit.

Interesting to see how you did the black. One of the guys at the model club i am in did a 1/32nd Ju 99 C NF in all black. When i aksed him how he did the black, his response was that there was not a bit of black on it. He had started with a light grey and worked up. But i do like the efefct you have got there with this. Until i saw the 88, it only occured to me to use black for a black finish.

Man, you have a steady hand Joe!  Your preshade Airbrush lines are so straight, mine look like a country back road.   Ty for this , another , expertly done WIP.  You're a constant learning source for me and I appreciate your work and sharing.

Thanks guys.  I've been trying to actively get some work done on this turkey.  I left off with the painting of the black and line shading.  My research showed the upper surface was RLM 75 with RLM 76 shaded in over the top.  This either left "leopard" spots of 75 showing through everywhere or it was done with squiggle lines in 76.  I opted for the spots as the Eagle Cal sheet I ordered (and still waiting on) has the spots.  The thing is......its easier to paint this the other way around....76 then and 75 spots. Gunze 76 went down first....

Then came the fun part (serious sarcasm).  Armed with Gunze 75 cut with 91% Isopropyl (so it would dry a bit quicker), I used the sheet that came with the kit (see pic) as a loose reference and got cracking on the spots.......and almost 2 hours later (that I'll never get back).....

Overall I'm happy with it. I tried some postshading but its hard to see with this particular scheme.  I may go back with a stronger shade solution.  If not, a panel wash should go a long way.  Truthfully, I dont think these were in service long enough to get that dirty.   

I did go back and weather the underside more.  I added some XF-2 Flat White to the leftover underside black I mixed earlier and threw down some condensation streaks.  I think this is about right. 

Wow, this is amazing. I always drool over your cockpits, and this one is no exception. Isn't freehand mottling just a blast? You really nailed it, though!

-BD-

You did an awesome job on the camo. Freehanding all those spots is a killer on my back, but you really did an excellent job. You have given me some insight into how I'll paint my P-61 by not using black.

BK

Fantastic camo.  She's a beautiful bird for sure.

Wow, I love the pre-shading, it's excellence is only viewed by how fantastic your camoflauge came out.  Amazing!

Toshi

OH MY WORD!    You are just excellent with the air brush .Soooo impressive .